


allegory of the cave

by seraf



Series: war, illuminated [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon Compliant, Euthanasia, Gen, Kamino, Medical Procedures, Post-Episode: s04e10 Carnage of Krell, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Doubt, Self-Harm, Speculation, Suicidal Thoughts, Umbara
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-09-18 10:59:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 12,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16993761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraf/pseuds/seraf
Summary: umbara, and everything that happens afterwards.short writing collection with a lot of pieces about the 501st after or during umbara, and the things it changed.





	1. prologue

it’s called  _umbaran syndrome,_ and most of torrent company doesn’t really know how to feel, when they hear that the phrase they muttered, gallows-humor style ( firing-squad-humor style ) over their sixth drinks at 79′s, has caught on. ‘ isn’t it just another word for friendly fire? ‘ topper, the new shiny of the 501st, asks, looking puzzled. 

rex sighs and turns to explain the difference. 

(  _friendly fire’s when your brother behind you can’t aim for karking sithspit, like jesse, here, and it hits you in the shoulder by mistake. or when the general tosses something to the side using the force and it hits one of us by mistake. it’s an accident, and it happens. umbaran syndrome is - you’re tricked or manipulated into hurting your allies. like with those brain worms commander tano came across, or when that sith hut’uun harpy convinced two of the generals that we were working against them, and general skywalker came_ this  _close to snapping dogma’s neck. )_

and … it’s rare, but not as much as it should be. the 53rd and the 62nd, trapped on an island shrouded in fog and nearly driving each other to extinction, only seeing the blaster bolts and firing back out of instinct alone. nahdar, thinking the clones were intentionally trying to slow him down. rex jokes that skywalker throwing him off that wall should, by all measures, count. 

and then the unthinkable happens. 

hundreds of times.  _execute order 66._

 _umbaran syndrome,_ some isolated part of cody thinks, as he waves for the order to shoot general kenobi down, and he wants to laugh hysterically.  _but are we betraying them, or did they betray us?_


	2. Chapter 2

it’s  _stupid,_ he tells himself, shucking off his boots and climbing up into the umbaran bunk, swallowing the unease down as best he could. he’s not a cadet anymore, he’s a  _soldier,_ and he’ll carry himself like one. 

but it just reminded him of -

sitting in the mess hall, and brothers clustering around him, but always sitting alone, even if he got there first, even if he sat closest to the food or viewscreen or another advantageous seat usually fought for. the one time he just felt desperately  _lonely,_ and rested his head in his hands, sniffing back tears. 

his squad, in their bed tubes, giggling and talking, and him opening his up, just to find them all suddenly pretending to be asleep. he slides back into the wall and pretends to ignore the whispering and laughing that starts back up as soon as he leaves. 

sitting in a corner of the training grounds during free time and reading through a holo; he never  _learned_ how to interact with his brothers so why bother trying it now?

sitting in the ‘fresher for too long, arms curled around his knees and rocking back and forth, not sure how to describe what he’s feeling right now, but that it  _aches._ ( he’s starving for touch; the kaminoans raise clones to be a tightly-knit group, easily physical and interacting with one another as easy as breathing - unfortunately, a pariah is built just as reliant on that touch, that communication )

somewhere along the line, when he wasn’t there, there were  _rules_ set up, and he feels like he’s always left out of it. he’d get disappointed looks or disgusted ones when he followed the orders or instructions they were given, and there were jokes he was never in on, games he didn’t know the rules to. 

he thought the 501st was going to be different. 

general skywalker  _smiles_ at him and tells him to get some rest, and dogma, still with some of the shiny not rubbed off him, immediately responds  _i’m fine._ that’s something they’re meant to do, right? try and look tough? and rex translates it for him, puts a hand on his shoulder and says  _the general’s giving you an order, dogma,_ and that makes  _sense._

and fives, too, offering to take dogma under his wing while two of the old 501sters did the same for tup - and he  _does._ he has friends in the 501st, but he stands with dogma and talks to him and  _chooses_ to. 

but then he’s following the orders like he should like he  _should_ and he can  _feel_ them drawing back like they always do but he doesn’t know what to do outside of them because what if he chooses  _wrong -_

jesse clears his throat. ‘ here comes  _dogma. ‘_ his name, turned again into an insult, something said in a bitter tone or with a sneer. 

he’s fine. it’s fine. he’ll just do better tomorrow. 


	3. Chapter 3

the blaster is still smoking, in dogma’s shaking hands. 

fives rests his hand heavily on top of it, forcing dogma to lower it, and slowly tugging it away from him. he knows the desperate look in dogma’s golden eyes, knows that if he  _doesn’t_ take it away soon, there’s a good chance dogma will turn it on himself. 

in the months to come, he sometimes wonders if inaction would have been a kindness.


	4. Chapter 4

there’s a  _trial,_ at least, though everyone guesses it might be a farce of one. three-fourths of the senators don’t even show up - they have more to do with their time, rex thinks bitterly, than state just how to dispose of a broken weapon. 

he finds that he’s not the only one in 501st blue headed towards the senate building. there are jesse, fives, appo, and tup, of course, also witnesses, but soldiers from carnivore and execute battalions, not just torrent company, getting in pairs or in groups off of sub-trains and speeders. 

he’s stopping a nearby brother with his helmet off, his armor still relatively shiny, who startles when rex grabs his shoulder. ‘ - sir? ‘

‘ what’re you doing here, trooper? ‘

he snaps to attention. ‘ i’m vixus, sir. ‘ ( got his name on umbara, then. ) ‘ and -’ he’s pausing, looking at the ground. ‘ … my squad died on umbara, sir. i’m the last one left. ‘ rex stands patiently, waiting for more. it’s … half an explanation, but not really a  _full_ one. 

‘ they were killed in the face-off, sir. ‘ ( the name the 212th and the 501st had given for krell’s deception - it made it easier to talk about, rather than saying  _we killed our vode._ ) ‘ there’s … they were killed by the 212th. there’s no one i can be angry at for them, now that krell is dead. they were tricked just as much as we were. ‘ vixus pauses. ‘ i don’t know him, sir. but - if sergeant dogma did shoot the general, i just want to stand there in solidarity. it’s the right thing to do. ‘

he’s looking around the square in front of the senate building. ‘ and … apparently i’m not the only one who had that idea. ‘  _vode_ in orange and blue, filing into the senate. rex nods once, not knowing what to say, and lets vixus go. 

‘ order! the senate gathers here today to decide the fate of trooper ct-5381 - ‘

‘ dogma. ‘

rex resists the urge to grimace. it’s fives. ( of course it’s fives. ) he’s in the witness booth next to rex, pushing their booth out onto the floor, and looking stubbornly mutinous. 

‘ his  _name_ is dogma. ‘

the murmur of conversation starts up again, and the chancellor’s smile is starting to look decidedly forced. ( mas amedda doesn’t even bother, fixing fives with a stony glare. ) dogma, where he’s sitting, between two vode of the coruscant guard, doesn’t even look up, hunched over.

‘ members of the senate, please - ‘ the chancellor begins again, but he needn’t bother; a hush falls over everyone present. rex, looking up, holds back a smile as he sees why. 

in every one of the visitor booths, and in each booth left empty by the senators who hadn’t bothered showing up to the trial, there were suddenly brothers, in orange and blue mixing together. as one, almost as if rehearsed, they’re pulling off their helmets.  _forcing the senate not to see us as faceless,_ rex realizes, tucking his own bucket under his arm. ( he sees jesse and tup and fives do the same thing, and one of the coruscant guards helps pull dogma’s helmet off, revealing his face - tattooed and wide-eyed and confused. )

there’s a sharp moment of silence, ringing through the air almost tangibly. 

chancellor palpatine hides a scowl behind a practiced smile, his arms folding behind his back. ‘ we welcome our brave troops to today’s trial. ‘


	5. Chapter 5

they all have nightmares, after umbara. 

* * *

it starts with krell’s first failed orders, with him accusing rex of being the reason they’re failing to take the capital. fives remembers the breath still ragged in his throat from the past - what, fourteen? fifteen? hours now that they’ve been marching along or fighting for their lives. in the dreams, the umbaran air is stifling, and he fights for every breath. 

‘ surely you won’t  _fail_ to recognize  _that, ‘_  he spits out through the block in his throat, fists clenched at his sides as he approaches krell. krell’s reaction is the same as it was back then, and there’s suddenly a plasma sword levelled at fives’ throat; but then everything freezes. 

‘  _you knew from here._ ‘ it’s hardcase, helmetless and looking right at him. ‘ _you could have stopped it all, right here, fives. but you didn’t. ‘_ and he smiles at fives, bittersweet and sad, and flames consume him. fives looks around with his skin crawling under the nanoprene, and all around him are the bodies of the 501st and the 212th, and krell’s lightsaber is  _still_ leveled at his throat. 

‘ arc-5555, ‘ krell says, and suddenly slashes out, and fives feels it cutting across his chest, as he crumples to the highway beneath them. ‘  _stand down. ‘_

* * *

jesse is in the umbaran starfighter, and it won’t  _move._ neither can he - his hands are forced behind his back like they were for the aborted execution, and the rest of his body is paralyzed. somehow, he’s also with hardcase, running through the passages of the droid ship,  _watching_ the bomb crash into the reactor core. 

the fire overtakes hardcase, and then him, and he wakes with a start. 

* * *

kix can’t save them. even in his dreams, he can’t save them. 

* * *

rex is everywhere. 

he’s in the cell blocks, and he musters the courage this time to pull the trigger, through his shaking fingers, the bolt going right through krell’s chest - but it isn’t krell. when the body hits the floor, it’s fives’, or cody’s, or waxerdogmahardcaseozringo ––

krell gets off the ship and tells skywalker he’s requested, and rex’s mouth is sewn shut. he can’t say anything. he can’t shout and demand that  _his_ general stay behind, or that krell is a lying  _demagolka_ who takes so many of his brothers with him - instead he hears his own voice, tinny and hollow, saying that  _it’s an honor._

he’s running across the field, and he  _knows_ its his own brothers he’s shooting at, but he  _keeps shooting,_ and he feels his hands clenched around his pistols and sees the 212th and the 501st mowing each other down and he tries to tell them, tries to snap them out of it, but they keep  _shooting._

he’s in the cells again, but this time, it’s him on his knees, and krell is standing behind him, and he  _sneers._

 _‘_ you’re shaking, captain. ‘

* * *

there’s a firing squad. 

there’s a firing squad, and dogma is staring at them facing him. jesse and fives and tup and kix with stony expressions and their hands on their guns, and rex standing impassively to the side. 

‘ ready weapons! ‘

it’s  _him._ the same tattoo, the same pattern of armor, and the same look of self-righteousness he’d had then.  _kriffing hell, how could i have been so_ stupid? his hands are cuffed behind his back, and his hands are folded behind his back, walking in front of the firing squad to stand by rex. 

‘ i’m sorry, ‘ he whispers, voice cracking, but they don’t hear him. 

‘ aim! ‘

the weapons level at him, and fives gives him that look full of  _contempt. ‘_  i hope you can live with yourself,  _dogma._ ‘the spectre of him marching down the line ignores him. he wants to plead  _i’m sorry_ to fives, but he  _can’t._

_‘ fire! ‘  
_

the blue of blaster bolts lights up the airbase for a fraction of a second, just like they did in life. but this time - they don’t miss. 

* * *

tup’s dreams don’t make  _sense -_ he had nightmares already, but this just seems to take bits and pieces and weld them together. marching-in-time/dogma, looking afraid and pointing his gun at him/the-mission-the-mission-execute-order-[REDACTED]/standing in the firing squad, trying to breathe evenly with his gun leveled at the others/good-soldiers-follow-orders-good-/general krell, running right at him and getting so close that when the plant lifts him off the ground, his lightsaber skins over the neck of tup’s blacks/soldiers-follow-orders-good-soldiers-follow-orders-GOOD-SOLDIERS-FOLLOW-ORDERS


	6. Chapter 6

there are always nightmares. 

this time, he’s hanging by puppet strings, tied around his arms, his legs, his torso, and a thick one around his neck, cold and metal and biting into his skin. 

and he’s in the courthouse again, in the seat he was put in days after umbara, helpless as they judge him for his crimes. 

 _treason_. and one of the threads holding up his arms splits.   
 _you betrayed your brothers._  twang! another string breaks, this time one around his thigh. 

they grow in tenor and in sound, listing off dogma’s crimes one after each other, a string breaking with each. until finally, there are only two holding dogma up - the one around his waist and the thick wire about his neck. 

the jury fades to silent, and the witness booth is illuminated. 

fives steps forwards with that look of righteous fury on his face. 

 _i hope you can live with yourself, dogma_ , he sneers, and the cord around dogma’s waist snaps, and dogma is falling, with nothing but the rope around his neck to catch him and -


	7. Chapter 7

‘ lie down. this won’t hurt. ‘ his  _vod_ speaks in a reassuring voice, and if dogma is honest, he’s too tired to argue. it’s what he was always good at, anyway; compliance without question.  _dogma. unwavering faith._ he felt the familiar sting of a hypo in his neck, and his vision started to swim. he let out what he thought would be his last conscious breath.  _it could have been worse._

except it didn’t end there. his body feels  _heavy,_ and his eyes are bleary, and he can’t move. one of the kaminoans is standing over him, and dogma can barely tell them apart from the rest of the white. ‘ we should be able to gather another pint of blood from him within the hour. are you ready to extract the spinal fluid, tsz-43? ‘ there’s a low beeping of assent from behind his head, and dogma is flooded with white-hot pain before his vision drifts again. 

he has no sense of what time it is - in hours or days or months since he’s been here. he’s awake sometimes and not, other times, and sometimes he’s suspended in between. here’s what he knows: 

he’s been a donor. even if he’s defective, his body still belongs to the republic, so the kaminoans are collecting everything from it they can. 

he’s had two hearts in his chest, and half a lung, and three livers at one point - they’re using  _him_ to clone cells, growing new organs in his chest, fueled by his faster growth and healing. 

he’s not alone in here. but for the most part, the other clones here are - they were bred for this specifically. they’ve never known anything outside of this, and dogma wonders if they’re even aware of what’s happening. 

‘ - the same batch as ct-5385. the  _other_ one to kill a jedi. lord tyranus wants us to dispose of the evidence, so we might as well be thorough. with any luck, general ti will stop her crusade and let us autopsy trooper tup. ‘ everything left in dogma is suddenly jumpstarting to an alert at the mention of tup.  _is he - autopsy? other one to kill a jedi? what’s happening?_

there’s a face swimming over him, and blearily, he recognizes it as the same trooper who sedated him the day he came in. they’ve got a sad look on their face. ‘ it’s over, ct-5381. you can rest now. ‘ nala se - he was pretty  _sure_ it was nala se - snapped something out, and the trooper sighed, pressing a needle to the side of dogma’s neck. ‘  _vor entye, vod. udesiir. ‘_


	8. Chapter 8

he barely remembers it, but certain parts stand out clear in his mind. the sudden  _lack,_ the sheer contrast of there being  _no pain._ not even a dull ache. being unstrapped from the medical table ( he’d been thinking of it as a  _dissection table_  for however long he’d been here, if he was honest. ) and put into a stretcher, the thin mattress pad feeling almost like a luxury. 

the smell of bacta as he drifted in and out of consciousness for manda knows how long, the feeling of floating. he wonders if this is what the womb feels like, for natborns. 

the sound of arguing, above and around him. he - had to be wrong, but he could swear once he saw an angry fives, jabbing a finger at one of the kaminoans over his stretcher. 

the rain, and the sound of it, now that they weren’t deep enough in the bowels of kamino that it was muffled through plastisteel and duracrete. 

one memory, a little starker than the rest. he was being moved, again, and they had ( who had? ) pulled off the mask on his face, the top of his stretcher opening, and 38′s face looking down on him. ( the one trooper not strapped down, in the donor rooms. some of the longer donors called him k’cyar. a mangled mix of the words  _killer_ and  _sweet._ he was the one who administered decommission, down there. ) 

he would flinch, when 38 reaches for his face, leaning down, but his muscles have been rigid for so long, he doesn’t quite remember how, still groggy from sedative. 38 gently presses their foreheads together. 

‘ k’oyacyi, dogma, ‘ he says, so softly dogma thinks he’s imagining it. ‘ don’t come back here. don’t ever come back. ‘ 

ten days later, he walks for the first time in months. 

### Chapter Management


	9. Chapter 9

something to be said for kamino: if i had died in the days where i was stuck there, i would never have noticed. there was just that omnipresent white, and the paralytic working its way out of my body, and the low thrum of pain - it took me three days as it was to realize that i wasn’t strapped down anymore.

( that was when the medical droid came in, impartially tested my blood and turned me over like i was an inconvenient rug it needed to sweep over. it cleaned up where i’d pissed myself, and left again. i realized that it  _had_ turned me over, and also that there wasn’t a bedpan there anymore - i hadn’t had anything but nutrition injections or an iv for months now, so my body didn’t have much to give up, anyway. )

even after i realized i wasn’t strapped down, or paralyzed anymore, it took me even longer to actually move again, like my body had  _forgotten._ why bother struggling, when it got you nowhere, only brought more pain, and there was no dignity to it?

( i  _tried,_ of course i did, some of the worse days, but all i could ever manage was rocking from side to side slightly and trying to cross my arms over my chest to no avail. )

( i figured that i might’ve become dar’manda anyway, for what i had done. maybe i didn’t even have the right to fight back against it anymore, didn’t have the right to try and be mandokarla or claim that i was trying to stay true to being a trooper or mando’ad by fighting back. it doesn’t make sense, but nothing really felt like it did, then. )

the first thing i managed to do was roll onto my stomach, and almost an hour later, prop myself up with my arms a little, before i collapsed and just lay there. it felt like i was having to learn to walk all over again - pushing myself into a crawl, using the wall to slowly stand up, and eventually being able to stagger across the room.

my body didn’t feel  _right._ it still doesn’t, not really. like they took something important out and jumbled up everything inside and tossed in a few pieces of their own - it’s not my body, anymore. i just happen to be here.

( maybe it’s because i was supposed to die. maybe like the jedi and the mando’ade believe, my body and my spirit-soul, the thing that makes me  _me_ had already seperated, and the kaminoans just forced us back together unnaturally. )

one of my vod’e asked me how i didn’t just go crazy in there.

i’ve got two answers for that, really:

one simply being that i’m not sure i  _didn’t._

the second being - they wanted me to. if i showed that i was completely unfit for the field, they could override skywalker and rex’s executive order of sorts to draft me back into torrent eventually and just send me back to the donors. so i  _couldn’t._

let me describe the room to you: it was sterile and white, like the rest of kamino, except a small third of the room done in silver, with the ‘fresher - a toilet bowl and a showerhead that would extend out twice a day for me if i wanted to. the entire room was about fifteen paces by twenty paces, the silver part being twenty by five of it. i counted. there was a small mirror built into the ‘fresher wall. there was a small rack on one wall that served as a bed, and two doors and three rayshields set up between me and  _out._

i showered twice a day. i was given nutrition injections once every three days. the sink slid out from the wall every - two hours, maybe? so i could hydrate if need be. every two nutrition injections, they’d take my blood, do a vitals check, leave again - the medical droid, pressing the needle into my arm, the stethoscope to my chest, and then leaving, was the closest thing i had to contact or socialization. sometimes it would even respond to me, and even if it was just to tell me  _ct-5381, please remain still_ or some variation, it was about the only thing that made me feel real, sometimes.

i don’t know what they did, there, but there was something they rubbed into my hair, shaving it short, and over my fingernails, every two sessions the droid checked my vitals, and - my hair, my nails, didn’t grow. it burned like all hell, but i think it was for convenience’s sake. they didn’t want me anywhere around something i could use as a weapon, either against them somehow, or to off myself - they were fine with me dying, of course, but only if  _they_ had control over it.

still, my nails were long enough to draw blood.

( i found that out, too. )

there’s only so much you can do to stay grounded, to convince yourself you’re  _real,_ when there’s no contact with the outside world and you can’t see time pass on your face or with any chrono or anything like that, and i suppose i found my way. they didn’t care if i tore my arms or thighs up - my nails weren’t sharp enough to  _really_ do too much damage, so it never bothered them. if anything, for them it was a victory, a sign i  _couldn’t_ go back on the field.

( i’ve spent the last few months learning about psychology, and i  _know_ that it’s stuck around in part because it’s an addictive habit, and it’s not  _really_ my fault i’m having trouble breaking out of the pattern, but that doesn’t really help things in the end. it doesn’t even convince  _me,_ really. )

so there was that to do. i’d sleep when i could, when i was exhausted enough that i didn’t care anymore what would show up in my dreams. i’d be tired enough that i’d roll to sleep and he’d be looming over me again, in the cell next to mine, and  _laughing,_ and i’d just lie with my back to the wall and sleep again.

i’d talk, just - saying everything i’d committed to memory. some of the regs they made us read every day, the names of all the brothers i knew, the vode an, every swear word i knew in mando’a, fives’ speech up against the wall, the terms of my sentence. just words, to fill up the space and the silence - even if it all came from me, sometimes i  _had_ to have the noise, or i would have lost it. it gave me something to do.

there was my pacing and measurements - see how long around the ‘fresher bowl is in pointer finger lengths, how many paces around the room, how many palm-lengths the sink was, and if i could double-check that before it slid back into the wall.

there was exercise, sometimes - the room was too small to jog in, but once my stitches had healed some and i’d learned to ignore the burning pain in my spine, i started doing sit-ups, push-ups, jumping jacks, planks, until my body would give out under me again.

sometimes i’d talk to myself.

yeah, i know how that sounds. but i wasn’t … really talking to myself. the one thing about being a clone is that if you squint hard enough at the mirror, or stare for so long unblinking that your eyes water up and blur, it could be any one of your friends or family looking back at you.

tup. and telling him that i was sorry, and that he’d been the best of our batch all along. kix, asking him how the different wounded were doing since umbara, and what the shinies had gotten up to lately. cody, asking about some of the escapades of his general recently. rex, and telling him i was sorry. crease and nine-eight and pip, asking them what they would have done if  _they_ survived - if it should have been them that lived this far, not me.

and jango, sometimes. i never met him, not really. but i’d ask if he was - it would depend on the day, but i’d either ask if he was proud of me or ashamed.

of course, it’s not like they answered. i don’t know whether that’s for better or for worse.

you know, i wanted to kill myself, then. though i’m not sure how much that’s changed - the first couple of times i tried were before i was even brought back to kamino. credit to my medic for me making it here. i think kix guessed it was a possibility for me. fiddled with all the guns in a fifteen-room radius, replaced the heat packs with stuns.

did you know that if you press a gun loaded only with stuns under your chin and pull the trigger, the barrel of the gun still needs to heat to fire off the shot, and as a result, the metal barrel leaves a circular burn, as well as knocking you out cold? i do, now.

( it feels like anyone, looking closely enough, could tell that my life is only very tenuously connected to this plane. )

there were a couple people who i would occasionally meet, who would come through my cell. two droids. one was called eefi ( their number was e-51493s2, but it’d been nicknamed eefi by the vod’e ) and the other dv-921. eefi was … almost  _friendly,_ for a droid. it would stay a little longer and talk, seemingly knowing that it was good to just hear something that wasn’t my own voice. dv wasn’t - it would give me the nutrition injection or take my blood and be gone as soon as it came.

there was a vod. i only saw him twice, and he was reconditioned - there was a terrifying blankness behind his eyes, and he moved like a machine. i asked him what his name was, and he gave me a number without expression, continuing in his work.

i won’t say his number here. it’s not important. our numbers aren’t  _people,_ and i don’t want to reveal who he might have been before they took that away from him.

and of course, there was nala se - she’d only ever be visible through the door, jotting down notes impartially, having sent in the medical droid to prod at me and scrolling down a checkup list on her holo, before leaving. she didn’t come often, but i think … she found me distasteful. a waste of limited resources, now that i wasn’t even a donor, wasn’t even helping the war effort with the last shreds of my body.

little gods, what else did i do?

i’d talk - not to anyone, but i’d say everything i remembered. as many of the regs as i could, the different mando’a chants we’d learned in history or to help ourselves concentrate, the fett clan family line, the words of the vode an, every speech we’d been given by the alpha arcs, just anything i could do to fill the silent space up with words and kill some time. it got to the point where there were a few times i was just lying on the floor saying the alphabet to myself over and over because i didn’t want to succumb to the silence.

when they took me out, i thought i was just finally going to my execution, you know?

they cuffed me, and there was a guard of six brothers with nala se, and i was led into a small - not room, even, just a door off the main hall. no one spoke to me. no one told me what we were doing or what they meant to do to me, and i was resigned to it being my death. they strapped me down to a stretcher, and nala se removed a hypo and pushed it into the side of my neck with a calculating expression.

my body started to go numb, and my eyelids felt heavy, darkness slowly beginning to wash over my field of vision, and the last thought i had was that dying this way wasn’t as bad as i could’ve gone.

and then i woke up, with my hands uncuffed, lying on a stretcher in medbay - they’d just sedated me to move me back over to the resolute.

i didn’t move. it’s going to sound ridiculous, now, but my first thought was that this was the manda. marching far away, after all. wouldn’t it make sense that in the fight continuing, it would be the same equipment, the same medbays, that we’d been used to in life? and i had to be dead. that was the only thing that made sense to me, then. for some of what i had done, i deserved it, and in the eyes of the republic, for the thing i’d done i  _didn’t_ regret, i deserved it even more.

the republic doesn’t care about our lives or us as individuals. everything i’ve known was telling me that i should be dead. i was an inconvenience at best, and a traitor at worst.

and kix walked in, and said hello nonchalantly, picking up a stethescope, and i asked him how he’d died.

he asked me if i was hallucinating, which, all considered, was a reasonable question. genuinely, i’m not sure if i ever started, on kamino - there were times when i’d see my face in the mirror really  _as_  jango or as tup or so on, or when i didn’t fill the silence, my brain would start to make up noise to fill it anyway. so i’m not sure that me hallucinating was that big a jump in logic.

me: i guess i’d have to be. i’m seeing you, after all.

him: you got  _pardoned,_ dogma. welcome back to torrent.

me: i suppose i  _am_ hallucinating.

he reached over and pinched my arm, and asked if that felt like a hallucination, and i told him that i wouldn’t know, i hadn’t ever really hallucinated before, and he looked - he gave me that medic look, like you’re  _just_ on the verge of rolling your eyes, but you have to be patient for your patient.

me: you’re at least a convincing one. you act almost like the real kix.

he was offended by that, i think. crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow and told me he  _was_ the real kix, and i didn’t have the energy in me to tell him that had to be impossible. just sagged and lay back down on the stretcher. he didn’t  _leave,_ though, and after a few minutes of silence, i told him that i should be dead.

just that, just that simply. ‘ i should be dead. ‘

i couldn’t really see him from where i was lying, but i could hear him sigh, and he walked over to me and smoothed my hair down, and told me to get some rest.

it was like flipping a switch in me, somewhere. it was a simple gesture for him, but it was the first human contact i’d had in - what, eight, nine months? a solid year? he touched my hair, and something small and curled up in my chest screamed like a wounded animal, and i just started to cry, leaning into the touch like a stray dog. i guess i never really understood the expression ‘touch starved’ until now, but then i understood it viscerally.

like a man who’d gone without food for a month and a half and was on the brink of death by starvation, so used to being hungry that his body doesn’t recognize food when he’s given it, doesn’t recognize anymore that it  _is_ hungry, because that’s just the state of being.

i was lonely, and i craved touch, and that hadn’t really hit me until kix touched me, simple and fleeting, and the dam burst.

i don’t really remember what happened in between, just that kix was suddenly there, cradling me like a lost cadet, and i was sobbing so hard that my lungs ached, that i couldn’t breathe except in short, shallow gasps, and i was holding onto him like a life preserver. i was afraid that if i let go, he would leave, and i would be brutally, suddenly alone again. and i think i knew that if i was, it would kill me. that sounds like an exaggeration, but it would.

but he didn’t leave. he stayed and just held me, chin propped to the top of my head and arms wrapped around me, and i didn’t  _understand._ when i had left, you see, the fact that i had been the one to shoot krell was still incredibly confidential. only rex, fives, and jesse knew, and that’s because they’d been there. in everyone else’s eyes, i was still just the traitor who’d led that firing squad.

that had changed, but i didn’t know that.  _couldn’t_ know that. and i didn’t understand why he’d hold a traitor.


	10. Chapter 10

there are a few things that  _do_ make sense to dogma. 

there’s a low searing pain below his chin. when he blinks open his eyes, there’s white light, painful and too-bright, and he’s letting his eyelids drift shut again. his heart aches, like it has since umbara, guilt sitting like a physical object on his chest and compressing his ribs, making it hard to breathe, lungs struggling. 

that’s it. 

there are many more things that  _don’t_ make sense. 

there’s a light pain in the crook of his elbow that he knows from experience to be an iv. there’s a faint smell of bacta. someone is holding his hand, squeezing just a little bit too tight - he realizes their hand is shaking. when he cracks open his eyes again, he realizes that the white light isn’t … ethereal, so to speak, but mundane; the lights of the medbay. 

it’s the first thing he says, voice creaky and unused. 

‘ why am i not dead? i should be dead. ‘

there’s a thrum of activity around him, and whoever’s holding his hand clenches it even harder for a moment, before there’s a soft voice addressing him - kix. even if he can’t see them right now, even if they all have the same accent and voicebox, he knows it’s kix. 

‘ dogma. are you alright? do you know where you are? do you know who i am? ‘

he’s responding duly; they’re seeing if he’s suffered a head injury, this is procedure. this, he knows how to do. ‘ medbay. kix. ‘

he’s pausing, and asks it again. 

‘ why am i not dead? i should be dead. ‘

there’s shifting, and he can begin to see blurry figures; he can even guess at who they might be. to his side, connected to the hand holding his; kix. standing by him with shoulders broader than the rest of them and a streak of bright silver-gold at head height; rex. no dark hair - hardcase? no, hardcase was dead, it had to be jesse. 

one of his brothers steps forward and speaks a bit grimly, when none of them seem to want to answer him. ( burning voice. fives. )

‘ the gun was set to stun, dogma. kix was worried you might try something like this, so we’ve all been carrying our heat packs and our guns separately. ‘

dogma’s eyes squeeze shut again. 

‘ why am i not dead? i  _should_ be dead. ‘

this time, he doesn’t mean it in a logistics manner, cause and effect ( i shot myself, why isn’t there a hole in my brain ) but more … pained, personal.  

he betrayed them, he failed, he was too - the word that came to mind was  _di’kutla,_ useless/stupid/worthless - to notice that krell was using him, he had turned his gun on his brothers even after krell had cut some of them down, he had stolen a gun from his commanding officer and later from his medic - he  _should_ be dead, they should just let him  _die_ and -

‘ not yet, brother. not yet. ‘

kix lets go of his hand, and a few seconds later, dogma feels something cold flowing through his iv, and everything fades to black again. 


	11. Chapter 11

when dogma comes back to the 501st, they almost don’t recognize him. 

his slicked-back hair has been buzzed down to the scalp, cropped short, and his nails cut to the quick - it seems like they’ve cut down everything deemed unnecessary. his flesh clings to his bones, illustrating each curve or jut of his skeleton. they’ve  _added_ some things, too - metal ports on the inside of his wrists or into his vertabrae. layers of scar tissue, in precise incision lines. 

the tattoo is the most recognizable thing about him, but even that looks faded, washed out, seemingly just an oddly shaped shadow cast across his face. an echo of its former self; the tattoo and dogma both. 

it takes him four days to be able to even do anything but lie in the medical bed and shudder, curled into the fetal position and shivering like he’s been left for dead on an ice planet no matter how many medbay or contraband blankets kix wraps around him. his teeth chatter, and sometimes he cries out, terrified. 

on the fifth day, he’s eerily silent, staring blankly at the wall. 

on the seventh day, kix manages to get about a third of a bowl of soup in him before he vomits it up, but dogma had been sitting upright, leaning heavily on him, but still  _upright,_ and it’s some sort of progress. 

his eyes don’t have a purpose to them any longer. dull and glassy and easily spooked, darting across the room like a scared animal. 

it takes until the tenth day for him to say anything more than the incoherent jargon he mumbles while asleep, twisting and turning and mangling the words for mercy in basic and mando’a both. they have to take what progress they can get, even if it came in the form of dogma directing those blank eyes towards kix’s blaster and whispering  _please._

four days later he breaks down and cries, and it seems like the words had collected in his chest - coming out in an uncontrollable flow as rex tries to help him walk, picks him up when his knees buckle again. half of it isn’t even understandable, but the parts of it that are make rex’s chest ache, and for a moment, he almost gathers his younger brother into his arms, holds him tight. 

it takes another three days for that, when dogma admits that the closest thing he’d had to touch in months was a medical droid checking his vitals. he clings to rex, still shaking, still bone-thin, and kix hovers like a protective watchdog - manda knows he’s been doing all he can to patch their brother back together. 

he still can’t eat. it’s been three weeks, and he still loses whatever’s put in him. they’ve had to use an iv, and all of them flinch when he shrinks away from it, fights the needle with as much strength as his fragile form can call upon. 

 _why bother? shouldn’t we send him back to kamino? can’t they treat him better there?_ skywalker asks with a frown, watching dogma try and fail to hold a gun again in the training room, his hands shaking too much to keep a grip. something in rex’s chest smarts at that. 

( does skywalker  _know_ how he sounds, sometimes? )

 _he’s all of us,_ fives says once, when rex passes on the question, the lingering  _why bother._ the answer comes easy to him.  _we’ve all got scars left from umbara._ they both look over to where dogma is taking a few shuddering steps, still clinging onto kix’s arm, but shuffling across the room nonetheless.  _if we can help him, it proves that couldn’t break us._


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dogma and tup are batchers. dogma's chip goes off first, but it went unnoticed.

it happens to dogma’s first, but they’re knee-deep in felucian mud with the 212th and don’t even  _see_ a jedi that whole leg of the campaign. ( as it so often happens, their generals aren’t even here. commander cody runs the 212th more than kenobi ever does, and they all know it. )

they’re all exhausted, coming back to their base camp, none of them bothering to peel out of their filthy armor as some of them drift off, guns laying across their laps - you never knew when the fighting would pick back up again, after all. rex lets himself sit for a few minutes, fatigue making his legs heavy to the point of almost unliftable, but then he’s back up on his feet, making his way around the men. 

he’s their captain, after all. he needs to show he’s still able to stay on his feet - their morale is already dangling over the edge of breaking point. 

dogma is sitting alone.

dogma is  _always_ sitting alone, rex knows. no one really knows how to talk to him, what to  _say,_ since umbara. he came back from that broken, struggling to put the broken pieces of his worldview together. it feels … wrong, to dislike him,  after he shot krell, and after the punishment he received for it. 

( he never states what that  _was_ , but he is sent to kamino for months and comes back bone-thin and flinching every time one of them moves too sharply. )

his gun is half taken apart, and it looks like he was cleaning the worst of the gunk out of it, but he’s … his eyes are unfocused, staring off at a point on the horizon, his head swaying slightly. rex frowns, and crouches next to him, rests one hand on the kid’s shoulder. ‘ dogma. ‘ 

dogma doesn’t even react to that, just murmurs something and keeps staring off with those glassy eyes. it takes rex a moment to puzzle out what he had said, but something in his chest aches when he registers it.  _good soldiers follow orders._

‘ dogma, ‘ he says again, gently, shaking dogma’s shoulder a little bit this time. dogma blinks, and jumps slightly when he realizes rex is next to him. 

‘ sir. i’m - i’m sorry. ‘ 

‘ nothing to be sorry for, dogma, ‘ rex says, and to himself, sighs a little bit. umbara really did hit the kid hard, huh. no wonder he was … well, he looked shellshocked, now. ‘ go get some rest. ‘ 


	13. Chapter 13

‘ we thank you for your valiant efforts, and we honor your comrades’ sacrifice. ‘

torrent company is standing to attention as best they can - there’s still a handful of injuries among them, and they’re all  _exhausted._ it’s been two days since they took umbara, but even with their ability to bounce back and resolve, it’ll take more than that to recover from the things they saw there. 

(  _vode killing vode. krell cutting through torrent and ghost cos. like butter. vixui, eating the wounded alive. the feeling of being surrounded, and just the sheer amount of brothers who had died. the fact that they’d just won umbara by the skin of their teeth._  )

fives can’t meet general kenobi in the eyes. all he can think of is his name in krell’s mouth (  _general kenobi and the other battalions are counting on us -_ ) or the times he would contact them, tell them they needed to fight harder, or remind krell of how important it was that they get to the capital as soon as possible. 

‘ … dismissed, troopers. ‘

the generals don’t know what to say. none of them do. 

* * *

‘ sir? what’s that for? ‘

rex is huffing softly, looking at the second medal in his hands. it’s … it might have been reminiscent of a laugh, once, but now it’s just tired. 

‘ dogma. he’s still an official member of torrent, after all. ‘

‘ mind if i come with you? ‘

rex shakes his head, and they make their way down to the prison cells in relative silence - neither of them feels much like talking, even their usual back-and-forth that comes easily from experience together. the door hisses open, and they’re walking into the small cell, dogma rising to his feet as they do. 

they don’t have any time to even greet him before a natural-born rank and file is saying something quietly to rex, handing him a file, and rex’s face twists in a bitter smile. 

rex steps forwards and pins the medal to dogma’s blacks. 

‘ the republic would like to honor your loyalty, trooper. ‘

he’s then handing dogma the file, giving him a moment to look through it, leafing through the different papers. 

‘ you’re coming back to torrent, but you’re on probation for the time being. the senate felt the need to keep an eye on you. said your loyalty showed concerning extremes at times, and therefore couldn’t be relied on. ‘

dogma’s looking down steadily, at the medal pinned to his chest and the folder in his hands. when he speaks, it’s almost a minute later - rex worried he wasn’t going to speak at all. 

‘ you know, i’m getting some mixed signals here. ‘


	14. Chapter 14

_take what you can get._

it’s what was tattooed on the back of mixer’s neck, before he was killed by assassin probes. ever since his name was added to the roster that rex lists out every night, he thinks of that saying. they only had the opportunity to  _live_ so much; they were born to die, plain and simple. there was only so much of life they were ever going to experience. wasn’t it for the best that they fought hard for those few good moments, for those minutes of extra time?

it’s what he’d done for dogma. bought just a  _little_ more time. 

( no one on the council or on kamino cared enough to argue as vehemently as he did for dogma; in that regard, they had always been doomed to lose. they thought of dogma as a flawed asset, where rex thought of him as a brother. the entire 501st, in turns, took the stand, from kix’s calm narration to fives, heated and raising his voice at the impassive long-necks. )

( it felt a bit like selling your soul, sometimes. the kaminoans agreed to keep ct-5385 in torrent company, under probation: if dogma slipped up again, there wouldn’t  _be_ a trial of any sort. and under the agreement that  _when_ ( rex had flinched at that, the reality of not  _if_ but  _when_ ) dogma died, his body would be sent back to kamino for a complete autopsy, to see if they could find the deficiency. )

he looked so small, in his blacks, with the defeated slump of his shoulders and head hanging, even when they took off his binders and told him he was to rejoin torrent company. he looked like a deer caught in headlights when rex met his eyes, handing him his armor back - rex knew, with a settling heaviness on his chest, that dogma hadn’t expected to see another daylight, much less be back in the barracks, strapping on his armor again. 

he doesn’t talk for the first three, four days he’s back, and barely eats, looking at the rest of the group in the same way shinies do commanders, like there’s a possibility they could swallow him whole. 

 _you shouldn’t have,_ he tells rex, on the fourth night, his voice dull.  _if they wanted to decommission me, i should have - i was a_ traitor,  _sir, i shouldn’t be - i shouldn’t still be here -_

rex rests a firm hand on his shoulder, feels him shiver.  _as your commanding officer, i have a duty to you and to the rest of my men, as much as i do the republic. i have a duty to keep you_ alive,  _dogma. and i’m not going to abandon that job._

it’s in terms of duty and honor that dogma can  _understand,_ and finally, he nods - he doesn’t look  _convinced,_ but if rex can’t keep dogma alive for his own sake, he’s not above talking his brother into staying alive for  _him._ maybe it’s selfish. but they’ve lost enough  _vode_ already. 

_take what you can get._

dogma will live for rex’s duty, and not because he should by all rights get the chance to. and there’s something inherently  _wrong_ about that that curls in rex’s chest, as if someone were compressing his armor to shatter his ribcage. but he will live. 

( he talks to five and comes back with a new tattoo around his wrist and relief evident on his face, something like a smile there for the first time in days. he talks to jesse, and there’s no relief there, but there is acceptance. forgiveness will not come easily from everyone, but they open up to having him back. )

he’s a reckless fighter, now. rex wouldn’t have expected it from  _dogma,_ of all people, but he can’t say he’s surprised. if you’re living on borrowed time, anyway, what’s the point in trying to prolong it? dogma says as much to rex, once, in the medbay for an arm broken in three places.  _i should have died weeks ago. it doesn’t really matter too much to me if i do, now._

rex shakes his head, and feels despair well in his throat, but  _anger,_ too. not at dogma, but the system that had let him down.  _you have to move on, vod’ika. you didn’t die then; you weren’t meant to. live now._

it’s easier said than done. 

_take what you can get._

maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised when it happened, a few weeks later; they were infiltrating some base on another one of general skywalker’s half-mad plans, splitting up with each of them heading in different directions. it  _sounded_ all well and good, until they started hitting the traps. 

( he’d heard over the comms that three of the new members of torrent were already dead, as well as nex and lunn, who had been with them since the second battle on geonosis. general skywalker didn’t say anything for them except to change the plan slightly to deal with the missing troopers. )

it was dogma who heard it first, the telltale  _beep - beep - beep_ of charges about to go off, and it was dogma who managed to act on it, jumping on rex and jesse to get them out of the blast zone and cover them. 

it’s always a bad moment, in the field, when you shake off the confusion of an explosion and your head cracking the plastisteel of your helmet, to realize that there’s blood soaking through the cracks in your armor, and it’s always made even worse when you have to find out if it’s your own, or your brothers’. rex moved his legs, sat up, experimentally - it wasn’t his. he might be concussed, and his ears were ringing like hell, but he’d missed the worst of it. 

the worst moment is the second you register that one of your brothers is going to die, and there’s nothing you can do about it. ( hevy, calling over the comms before the base blew. echo, in the second before the blasts hit the fuel tanks of the shuttle. charger, falling, his arms reaching upwards. ridge, his fingers slipping and his desperate scream as he was sucked out into the vacuum of space. )

( dogma, lying on his front and gasping for each shallow breath, explosion and shrapnel tearing through most of his side, white-and-blue armor stained red. )

he knows what’s going to happen. what  _always_ happens, but he still hurries to turn dogma onto his back, jesse helping him pull off dogma’s helmet. 

dogma is laughing. 

painfully so, by the looks of it ( rex is no medic, but by dogma’s wheezing, he’d guess a punctured lung ), but he’s still grinning like a child on their name day, shoulders shaking, and his hand reaches out for rex, who takes it.  _you’re shaking, captain._ he thanks whatever force there may be: his hands aren’t trembling now. 

 _i did it,_ he says, and rex - wants to shake him and ask what that  _means,_ and at the same time, he has the terrible feeling that he knows.  _sir, i - i did something right, this - this time._ rex realizes that he doesn’t think he’s seen dogma smile before, not like this: genuinely  _happy_ in himself for once.  _i was - **good.**_

rex wants to shake him back into a standing position, wants to tell him he was always good, and get him back on the field, but he knows, for all his damned experience, that dogma won’t walk away from this. so he just squeezes his hand.  _you did good, dogma. i’m proud of you._

 _tell them - i’m sorry._ it’s quiet, but insistent, and rex sighs. even jesse had forgiven dogma for umbara, long ago, but dogma’s eyes are golden and pleading, and -  _i will. don’t worry about it, dogma._

he swears he’s not crazy; he’s almost certain he sees dogma try to snap a salute, and that almost pulls a burst of confused laughter from his chest. leave it to dogma to do that even now.  _thank you._ rex knows what he means. for the promise to pass on his words, but - mostly, for the extra time, however short it was. 

general skywalker’s voice comes through the comms, loud and clear, and in a few seconds, jesse and rex go to meet him. 


	15. Chapter 15

the problem with krell -

well. there were many problems with krell. he’s a ghost story here, y’know. you can tell who’s been here for longer just by saying  _umbara;_ half the troopers will freeze dead for a second. be glad you missed it, shiny. 

but the problem with krell is it’s  _not_ just krell. 

sure, he was the worst of them all. but … i had two friends i lost on the citadel raid - longshot and charger. charger, he - he fell to his death, onto an electromine, and three jedi just watched him fall. longshot just couldn’t run fast enough and got fried. 

but even more, too. i’d die for general skywalker, cross my heart, but the problem is - i’m sure he expects me to. his plans - we went to rescue his astromech at one point, and only four or five men made it back of the twenty who went out. for one droid. or the time commander offee ran trap through because he was infected, rather than try and get rid of the parasite. 

they like to say they think of us as  _people,_ but … you have to remember, kid, when it comes down to it, if someone  _buys_ you, they don’t consider you a person. not really. we’re soldiers, but sometimes that’s not the same thing as saying we’re  _men._


	16. Chapter 16

kix has had to do this job twice, and each time before, he has silently begged and pleaded to the force or to manda or just whatever good there  _is_ out there; never again, please, don’t make me do this again. 

he’s a medic. even as a combat medic, he’s meant to  _save_ the lives of his men, not end them. 

( last time was dogma, offering kix his arm for the injection with a look that just looked tired and faintly  _relieved._ )

he knows it the second he sees it, a semi-transparent hypo filled with a calm blue liquid, and there’s a part of him that wants to just take it and throw it across the room so it shattered; but he knew the medical droid would either just replace it or do it itself, so with shaking hands, he picks it up. 

the trooper’s name is maru, and he had had two limbs crushed by a rockfall, kix taking skywalker’s lightsaber from him, deaf to his protests, and amputating them to pull maru free, pressing a hypo to his neck to ease the pain and placing him with the other wounded. 

for nothing. kix might as well have left him to die. 

( he couldn’t, he could  _never,_ he had to do everything he could to  _save_ them - )

maru doesn’t know, and kix isn’t going to tell him. he can’t. he’s checking maru’s vitals as if it matters, frowning at his blood pressure and gently feeling the stumps where his legs used to be, seeing if the skin is inflamed to the touch, gauging his reactions and seeing if he winces. 

maru pulls a tired grin. 

‘ they’ve not got me down yet, kix. gimme a couple of days and i’ll be back on my feet. ‘ he pauses for a beat, looking down at his stumps that ended around the knee. ‘ well. figuratively speaking. ‘

‘ that’s a  _terrible_ joke, ‘ kix says, a low note of despair in his voice, and maru just grins up at him. 

‘ so what’s next? ‘ 

kix holds up the hypo. ‘ quick sedative, put you right under. ‘m sure you don’t want to  _feel_ it when they hook you up to a bunch of things to karking  _get back on your feet. ‘_ maru laughs, and the lie feels bitter in kix’s throat, bile and his conscience rising. 

he swallows them both down. 

maru turns his arm towards kix for the hypo, and kix refuses to let his hands shake as he presses the plunger, eyes shutting for a moment, heart turning over. he’s nudging maru with his shoulder, giving him an exasperated smile. 

‘ go on, get some sleep. ‘


	17. Chapter 17

it takes rex a minute to untangle what dogma’s saying. hell, it takes him a solid few seconds to realize that dogma’s  _saying_ anything, period, face muffled where it rests on top of his crossed arms on top of his knees, and speaking in an incoherent jumble of basic and mando’a. 

‘ calm down, it’s okay, dogma. it’s okay. breathe. ‘ he’s sitting besides dogma, careful to leave a good few inches of space between them, thinking that might’ve been what set him off in the first place. ‘ you’re here. on the resolute. it’s okay. it’s okay. ‘

( kark, but he has no idea what he’s doing. bits and pieces he’s picked up from experience, shinies waking up screaming in the middle of the night or suddenly becoming aggressive and snapping or crying at seemingly harmless things.  _trauma,_ kix voiced once quietly to rex, both of them sitting on upper bunks in an empty barracks. )

(  _that’s impossible,_ he’d replied, voice mechanical, this as much of a script as the briefing he’d give every week and a half, or the times they’d chant the vode an on kamino.  _we were built to withstand any trauma._ )

clearly not the case. 

dogma is quieting now, breathing coming in wheezes but slowing down, head still resting on his knees and shoulders hunched in on himself. rex waits another few minutes until dogma seems to have regained himself enough to talk. 

‘ what’s the matter, dogma? ‘

dogma’s swallowing, lifting his head slightly and moving his hand, chewing on the side of it as if he didn’t even realize he was doing it. he’s gathering himself, glancing at rex almost as if he’s  _afraid_ of him. 

‘ there’s too much. ‘ 

it’s said softly, hugging his knees to his chest. 

‘ i’m with the group, and … i  _want_ to. i want to be with you and be friends with the company, and sometimes i want it so bad it  _hurts._ and … the same thing for touch, too, sir - i  _want_ to be close and i just want to be  _held_ sometimes, even if that sounds ridiculous, but sometimes, i just … ‘

he’s drifting off, looking at rex as though he’s afraid, and rex just looks steadily back at him, making it clear that he’s listening without judging. 

‘ sometimes it’s just overwhelming. suddenly it’s too much noise, or people are suddenly too close or i can’t handle being in a crowded room anymore and i just - i don’t know how to deal with it and i  _hate it._ how am i going to get back into things again if i can’t even be in the same  _room_ as my vod’e? ‘

rex carefully reaches out a hand, resting it on dogma’s shoulder, gentle and non-intrusive enough to signal that dogma can shift his hand off his shoulder if it makes him uncomfortable. 

‘ hey. it’s okay. you just got out of … basically constant solitary confinement. things might be overwhelming for a bit, compared to that level of sensory deprivation. just take it as much as you can, dogma. we’ll get there. ‘

### Chapter Management


	18. Chapter 18

rex thinks about what he could have done for them all. how he could have done better by them. he knows some things are impossible, he’s a practical man, so his fantasies never include him  _knowing_  things, like that fives was telling the truth and more right than they could ever know, or what krell was planning. but just - him doing  _better._ being a better captain, a better older brother. 

slick he - maybe he could have never stopped him, or seen that coming. but he could’ve given slick some way to feel less  _trapped._ could have caught him before slick knocked out their artillery and hit their weapons depot. could’ve … could’ve given him a soldier’s death. a blaster bolt right to the forehead. better than what kamino did. 

he thinks of teth, and the lack of strategy they’d been given going in. the six of them that made it out. he thinks about talking to skywalker, then - putting his foot down and stating that they find a path with less casualties, or calling in for reinforcements. 

he could have noticed that  _that wasn’t denal, that’s not how denal walks. that’s not a vod. not one of us._

there’s still a twinge of loyalty that flares up, guilty at the thought - but he could’ve let the doors shut before tano climbed into the saferoom. both ways, she would’ve caught the contagion, and if they hadn’t waited for her, those brothers wouldn’t have died, sitting in a naboo bunker.

at one of skywalker’s reckless plans, he could’ve just left him behind. left him to die, and saved his brothers instead. the galaxy might thank him. alderaan might. 

he could have given dogma - manda, but he could’ve given the kid  _any_ support. they’d gotten his records shortly after his decommission, and rex had to see that he and tup had just reached eight. they shouldn’t be on a battlefield, much less  _this_ one. all troopers had were each other. and he had been alone, with his youth and his black-and-white morals and the crushing dillemma, and none of them helped. 

he could have … he could have stayed with fives, on kamino. he could’ve listened to fives, on coruscant. he could’ve told fox  _no, he won’t shoot!_ he could have not taken skywalker with him. could’ve asked the general to force-shove his blasters away when fives reached for them. 

he could have - he could have - he rests his forehead on the pillow with a soft thump. his back is stiff. it could be from age, especially as accelerated as it is. but it could be the weight of his brothers’ graves - he won’t shunt it to the side. he knows the guilt that belongs to him. 


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: you hold onto friends by keeping your heart a little softer than your head + dogma

‘ i’m sorry, you know. ‘ 

he’s back in his own cell, now a floor below krell’s body, two floors below any of the umbarans - alone. his helmet is somewhere on the floor above him, and fives is - on guard, he supposes. his eyes squeeze shut, shoulders hunched over. in his armor, he shivers, the sweat soaked into his blacks chilling him through, forced to sit on the cell floor. 

he doesn’t look up at fives. 

‘ for … the execution. i’m sorry. i thought - ‘ he chokes on his words, head dropping, defeated. ‘ i thought i was doing the right thing, ‘ he says, and the words sound hollow even to him, nose stinging, the telltale sign of tears. he doesn’t want to see fives’ face, the contempt for him he’s sure is there just one more time. 

( he deserves it. he deserves fives’ sneer or his harsh words. )

he drags his eyes up to fives’ face because he doesn’t deserve to hide from it, the conviction bled out of him, and tenses, waiting for the anger he’s sure will be there. 

it isn’t. 

fives looks … sad. unbearably, deeply sad, and dogma shrinks away from that. he doesn’t deserve fives mourning for him. 

there’s a warble of technology, and dogma looks up with wide eyes as the rayshield door to his cell powers down, fives crouching next to him and reaching for him, and dogma’s eyes squeeze shut, but his hands drop away from his face, away from the defense.  _i deserve it. i was wrong. i was so wrong, and you almost - i could have -_

he waits for a blow that never comes. 

fives’ hand clasps the back of his head, and their foreheads press together, the solid  _presence_ of the arc trooper contrasting hard with dogma’s - he hadn’t realized he was trembling. shaking. 

‘ oh, vod’ika, ‘ fives says, and that grief is there again, and dogma wonders  _why._ what had he done that would make anyone miss him? he had failed, he had failed as a trooper and as a brother and - 

‘ i’m sorry, ‘ he whispers, breath heaving in his chest, and he realizes that there’s a tear rolling down his cheek. ‘ i’m so sorry, fives, i’m sorry - ‘ 

‘ it’s alright, vod’ika. ‘ fives says, and holds him there, holds him steady, doesn’t allow him to shake. ‘ it’s alright. i forgive you. you were doing your best, dogma. i forgive you. ‘ 

dogma lets out a broken little sob, and fives pulls him tight to his chest, dogma’s handcuffed wrists trapped between them. 

he remembers fives volunteering to lead him around, at the start of the mission. how well he and tup got along. his hand, lowering dogma’s white-knuckled ones around the stolen pistol.

_maybe in another life, we could have been friends. a better one._


	20. Chapter 20

‘ let the case of clone trooper 5381, rank of sergeant, be resumed. captain rex, as his commanding officer, i understand you have an appeal you’d like to make in the defense of 5381? ‘ 

dogma’s eyes, in the pod where he sits with his hands cuffed and his shoulders slumped, dart up to rex, brows drawing together in confusion. why were he and fives still fighting for him? it was easiest for everyone if this case was wrapped up neatly. best for the 501st if there was one person on which to place the blame of umbara - a turned jedi, and so many men dead. 

but it kept dragging on. 

dogma could almost  _feel_ the hostility growing in the room as the senators had to keep listening to a trial that should have taken an hour at most - it was only a formality, anyway,  _slated for decommission_ was already printed neatly on dogma’s file. 

rex stands up, and there’s an odd look in his eyes. the veterans of the 501st watch with something walking the line between excitement and wariness; fives remembers it from right before rex approached the blast doors, holding a droid head in front of the cameras. it shouldn’t have worked, but it did. 

‘ thank you, vice speaker, ‘ rex says, nodding to mas amedda. ‘ i want to ask senator burtoni something. ‘ and his eyes fix on the kaminoan senator as a murmur ripples through the crowd. burtoni had been advocating for dogma’s swift decommission from the start, even offering to complete it on coruscant and take his body back to kamino for the autopsy. 

burtoni’s dark eyes narrow, but she tips her head, inclining that rex can speak. 

rex’s hands fold efficiently behind his back. ‘ senator burtoni. can you please tell the members of the senate what the contingency orders for the grand army of the republic are? ‘

‘ of course, ‘ she says, long fingers folding together. ‘ they are a series of contingency orders given to the clones to be carried out under certain circumstances. i fail to see how they are relevant at this time. ‘ 

there’s a grim but steely look to rex as he nods once, and continues. ‘ senator burtoni. can you describe to us contingency order 66? ‘ 

her eyes narrow at rex as she seems to follow the path that his logic is taking, but she can’t  _refuse;_ even if she does, they are available for military record, and would be able to be referenced in a court-martial. 

‘ … yes. in the event of jedi officers acting against the interests of the republic, and after receiving specific orders verified as coming directly from the supreme chancellor, gar commanders will remove those officers by lethal force, and command of the gar will revert to the supreme chancellor until a new command structure is established. however. clone trooper 5381 was  _not_ given such a contingency order, nor was he contacted by the chancellor to give him the authority to execute general krell. ‘ 

‘ no, ‘ rex concedes. ‘ but isn’t the purpose  _of_ contingency orders to put in place procedures for the gar in worst-case scenarios? dogma was not in contact with the chancellor, no. but i invite the senator to remember that krell had sabotaged our communications. we were isolated from making contact even with ghost company. ‘ 

he leans forwards in the defense booth, making his points one by one. ‘ as sergeant dogma’s commanding officer, i ask the senate to take this contingency order under consideration. krell was a jedi officer acting against the interest of the republic, dogma removed said officer with lethal force, and we were placed under the command of the chancellor, staying with the coruscant guard, until such a time as general skywalker was able to be re-established as our commanding officer. ‘ 

chancellor palpatine looks thoughtful, fingertips pressing together, even as halle burtoni turns to look at him. ‘ sir, this cannot be allowed as part of sergeant dogma’s case. the contingency orders are irrelevant to - ‘ palpatine holds up a hand gently, silencing her. 

‘ thank you, captain rex, ‘ he says, tipping his head graciously. ‘ this  _will - ‘_ and halle burtoni glowers ‘ - be taken into consideration during the vote for …  _dogma’s_  fate. if there are no other points you wish to bring up at this time, we would like to ask the clone officers to leave the room so we can properly discuss this case. ‘ 

‘ nothing further to report, sir. ‘ 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in some versions of canon, order 66 was available military information, just - as a contingency order. not the biochips, obviously, but the fact that there were contingency plans in general. ergo - the idea for rex citing one in dogma's trial.


End file.
